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A 

BIOGRAPHY 

OF 

LINCOLN 




PRICE TEN CENTS 



A Critical and Biographical 
Sketch of 

LINCOLN 




Minneapolis, Minn. 



,f\54- 



COPYRIGHT 
APPLIED FOR 



©GLA273U 




Abraham Lincoln 



Born on Sunday, February 12th, 1809 
Died on Saturday, March 15th. 1865 



UncolnU]^!!. 



PREFACE. 

The author in writing the biography of these em- 
inent persons, has mentioned the day of birth, provid- 
ing the day of the month is given from A. D. for the 
dates are the most difficult part of the person's history, 
80 we take the historical facts as true. 

The law of biography, like history in general, are 
truths of matter and method, and clearness of express- 
ion; the first propriety is necessary to keep our under- 
standing from the imposition of falsehood. 

I have not thought of giving full history of the 
various discussions of measures as it does not form a 
part of genuine biography, and can only serve to render 
a book tiresome to many readers. 

My object has been to give a clear view of the 
whole career of the person in an equitable form. These 
gifted beings may be said to have endeared our language 
and institutions and our national characters. 

It would be difficult to name all the authors from 
whose works the compiler of this volumn has copiously 
extracted from. He is largely indebted to Holland, 
Harper, Cyclopaedia of English Literature by Robert 
Chamber, Appleton's, edition by Francis Hawks, also 
from Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi, the celebrated 
Swiss historian. The articles are drawn from authors 
and historians of the first rank, and the most authentic 
source. Nearly all •)f these biographies, the reader 
will find profitable for study, while their perusal will 
be interesting and instructive to all. 

He grounds his hope of the public, taking an in- 
terest in this work upon its own intrinsic utility. 

Albert Anderson. 




LINCOLN. 

'HE name of this amiable man is deeply 
engraved upon the history of the United 
States. 

Abraham Lincoln, the subject of 
this sketch, who succeeded liuchaunan in 
the President's chair, was the sixteenth chief magi- 
strate of this great commonwealth of ours. The day 
of his birth was Sunday, February twelfth, year 1809. 
His birthplace was in that of Hardin County in Ken- 
tucky, now embraced by the lines of the recently 
formed County of Larue. A region more remarkably 
picturesque was at that time hardly to be found in all 
the new country of the west, variegated and rolling 
in its surface — about two-thirds of it timbered and 
fertile, the remainder composed of barrens supporting 
only black-jacks and postoaks and spreading into plains 
or rising into knolls as knobs and watered by beautiful 
and abundant streams. 

It is as attractive to the eye of the lover of nature 
as to the enterprise of the agriculturist and the passion 
of the hunter. Some of the mounds rising out of the 



barrens reach a considerable elevation and are dignified 
by the name of mountains, Shiny Mountain, is one of 
the most lovely of these, giving a view of the whole 
valley of the Nolin, a still larger elevation is the Blue 
Ball from whose summit one may see on a fair morn- 
ing, the fog rising from the Ohio River twenty miles 
away. 

In a rude log cabin, planted among these scenes, 
the subject of this biography opened his eyes. The 
cabin was situated on or near Nolin Creek, about two 
and a half or three miles from Ilodgensville, the 
present County Seat of Larue County, (Ky.) 

This eminent man was the oldest son and second 
child of Thomas and Nancy (Hanks) Lincoln. His 
father was a man whom everybody loved and who held 
the warm affection of hts illustrious son throughout the 
I'emainder of his life, a great man never drew his in- 
fant life from a purer or more womanly bosom than 
from his mother. Mr. Lincoln always looked back to 
her with unspeakable affection. Here was the home 
and here was its occupants, all humble,, and miserably 
poor. Yet it was a home of love and virtue. 

The schools in Kentucky were in those days scarce 
and very poor. Mr. Hazel and Dorsey were Abraham 
l^incoln's first teachers and about one year of schooling 
was all that future bestowed upon his intellectual de- 
velopment, according to common tradition. The 
name of Lincoln can be traced as far back as the colon- 
ial days, by the name of Samuel Lincoln of Norfolk, a 
Province of England and on his mother's side to 
Thomas Hanks, who was a soldier under Oliver Crom- 
well, the protector, but the best biography is from his 
own lips. 



"My parents were both boru in Virginia. Mother, 
who died in my tenth year, was of a family by the 
name of Hanks. My paternal grandfather, Abraham 
Lincoln, emigrant to Kentucky about the yeare 1781- 
82, his ancestors who were quakers went to Virginia 
from Berks County, Pennsylvania in effort to indentify 
them with the New England family by the same name 
ended in nothing more indefinite than a similarity of 
Christian names. 

In my eighth year my parents removed from Ken- 
tucky to Spencer County, Indiana, so here in the midst 
of the wilderness, lie as a boy assisted his father in the 
management of the farm." 

He lived to behold the country around him become 
flourishing and prosperous, to see its dark forests pass 
away like some vision of enchantment and its broad 
plains and valleys blooming and teeming with luxuriant 
produce of a fertile soil. 

In March, 1830, his father again removed to what 
is now called Mocon County, in the vicinity of Decatur, 
Illinois, where they built a log house on the North 
bank of the Sagamon River where he split the rails for 
the fencing, a fact which was prominently brought for- 
ward for a political purpose thirty year later. There 
new scenes opened up before him. He became the first 
steamboat pilot on the Sagamon River, and made his 
second voyage on a flat boat to New Orleans. The 
boat was stuck on a mill-dam and was got off with 
great labor through an ingenuous mechanical device, 
which led some years later to Lincoln's taking out a 
patent for an improved method for lifting vessels over 
shoals; this voyage was memorable for another reason; 
the sight of slaves chained, maltreated and flogged at 



6 

New Orleans was the origin of his deep conviction 
upon the slave question which brought about the 
emancipation proclamation. 

Returning from this voyage he became a resident 
for several years at New Salem, a recently settled vill- 
age then in the department of Sangamon County, 111. 
Here he became engaged in various occupations — clerk, 
postmaster and a short time a county surveyor and in 
the meantime he studied law, and was captain of a 
company in the Black Hawk War in 1832. He also 
became involved in business. The result was bank- 
ruptcy, his debts were liquidated in the year 1849. 
Hitherto his history thus far has been related to his 
birth, education and growth of mind, character and 
personal struggle. 

The time had come with Mr. Lincoln for his trans- 
lation to a new sphere of life, which began about the 
year 1834, for which by nature and talent he was em- 
inently fitted for, in the years of 1834-40. He was a 
member of the Legislature on the Wing's ticket. He 
rapidly acquired that command of language which ad- 
ded to his intimate knowledge of the people from which 
he sprang, which made him more than a match in de- 
bate for his new well-educated opponents — he being 
admitted to the bar in 1836. He soon established him- 
self at Springfield .where the State Capital was located 
in 1839, largely through his influence. In the year 
184 2 the 4th of November he married Miss Mary Todd, 
who had resided several years at Springfield. She was 
the daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd of Lexington, 
Ky. Mrs. Lincoln was a woman well fitted to any 
station, the charms of a fine person with intellectual 
accomplishments of high order and beauty of mind 
were happily blended in her character. 



Lincoln was not regarded by his professional as- 
sociates as profoundly versed in the principles of law, 
although he was looked upon by them as a very re- 
markable advocate. No man in Illinois had such power 
before a jury as he. This was a fact universally ad- 
mitted. Let us here quote Justice David Davis, of the 
Supreme Court of the United States. 

"I enjoyed for over twenty years the personal 
friendship of Mr. lAncoln. We were admitted to the 
bar about the same time, and traveled for many years 
what is known in Illinois as the Eighth Judicial Circuit. 
In 1848, when I first went on the bench, the circuit 
embraced fourteen counties and Mr. Lincoln went with 
the Court to every county. Railroads were not then in 
use and our mode of travel was either on horseback or 
in buggies. Mr. Lincoln was transferred from the bar 
of that circuit to the office of the President of the 
United States, having been without official position 
since he left Congress in 1849. In all the elements 
that constitute a great lawyer he had few equals. His 
power of comparison was large and he rarel}^ failed in a 
legal discussion to use the mode of reasoning. The 
brain work of his mental and moral being, was honesty, 
and a wrong cause was poorly defended by him. 

James Russell Lowell, was the first of the leading 
American Poets to see clearly and fully and enthusi- 
astically proclaim tlie greatness of Abraham Lincoln 
in his Birmingham address on Democracy. 

But Democracies have likewise their instincts. I 
have also seen the ablest Statesmen and most pregnant 
speakers of our generation, a man of humble birth and 
ungainly manners, of little culture beyond what his own 



8 

genius supplied, became more absolute in power than 
any monarch of modern times, through the reverence 
of his countrymen for his honesty, his wisdom, his sin- 
cerity, his faith in God and man and the noble human 
simplicity of his character. 

Mr. Lincoln was a great admirer of Henry Clay, 
the golden mouthed and silver tongued orator— the life 
of that Statesman he read when a boy. It grew with 
his years and when he reached manhood it deepened in- 
to admiration. In 1844 he stumped Illinois for him 
and even extended his labors to Indiana and his defeat 
for the presidency, none felt it more keenly than he. 
The unexpected defeat of his favorite, in the year 1846 
he was elected to the United States House of Repre- 
sentatives, over the celebrated Peter Cartwright. Dur- 
ing his single term in Congress, Lincoln did not attain 
any prominence.? He voted for the reception of anti- 
slavery, petitioned for the abolition of the slave trade 
in the District of Columbia, and for the Wilmot pro- 
viso, but was chiefly remembered for the stand he took 
against the Mexican war. His speech delivered at this 
time was one of his master pieces. During this session 
there were men who voted for him for the Presidency 
more than twelve years afterwards. 

Mr. Lincoln's congressional career terminated at 
the close of the session of March 4th, 1849, and for 
reasons satisfactory to himself he declined a renomin- 
ation. Returning to his home Lincoln entered upon 
the duties of his profession and devoted himself through 
a series of years less disturbed by diversion into state 
and national politics than he had been during any pre- 
vious period of his professional life. 



In the year 1858 he had his great contest with 
Douglas for the XJ. S. Senatorship, though defeated his 
memorable prophesy is recorded in history — this gov- 
ernment cannot endure permanently, half slave and half 
free. 

Evincing such clear comprehension of the design 
of slave power, by exposing the sophistry of his op- 
ponent with such marvelous skill by putting the claims 
of manhood and liberty in such luminous statement, 
which prepared and paved the way for his nomination 
for the presidency, in the year 18G0, a mighty crisis in 
the United States had arrived^ — the south had long for- 
■seen the evident result of Rebublican ascendency, the 
election of Lincoln was to them the handwriting on the 
wall. The Republican Convention was held in Chicago 
on Wednesday, May 16th, year 1860, where Lincoln 
was nominated for president and Hannibal Hamlin 
for vice-president and the Democratic convention was 
held in Baltimore, Maryland on Monday, June ISth, 
year 1860, where Stephen Arnold Douglas was nom- 
inated for President and Herschel V. Johnson for Vice- 
President in November. Lincoln and Hamlin were 
duly elected, defeating Douglas and Johnson. They 
were inaugurated March 4th, year 1861, when Lincoln 
left his home at Springfield for Washington on 11th of 
February 1861 with the following address: 

"My friends, no one in my position cannot appre- 
ciate the sadness 1 feel at this parting, to the people I 
owe all that 1 am. Here I have lived more than a 
quarter of a century; here my children were born, and 
here one of them lies buried. I know not how soon I 
shall see you again. A duty devolves upon me, which 
is, perhaps greater than that which has developed upon 



10 

any other man since the days of Washington, he never 
would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine 
Providence upon which he at all times relied. I feel 
that I cannot succeed without the same divine aid 
which sustained him and on the same almig-hty being- 
I place my reliance for support, and I hope that you, 
my friends, will all pray that I may receive that divine 
assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with 
which success is certain again. I bid you all an affect- 
ionate farewell." His prayers were answered, he guided 
the ship of State safely through, the war proper began 
on Friday, April 12, year 1861 with the firing on Fort 
Sumter at Charleston, Va., by the Confederates. 

The battle of Gettysburg in the first three days of 
July 186;! was the deciding battle for the Union forces 
under Major-General Meade defeating the Confederates 
under General Robert Lee, and in the month of 
September 1862, Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation 
was announced and it took effect on the first day of 
January, 1863, and thus disin thralled about four 
million slaves and fulfilling his own words of 1858 
this government cannot endure half slave and half 
free. 

The Rebublican Convention was held in the city 
of Baltimore, Maryland, the Tth of June, 1864 where 
Lincoln received the nomination for President, Andrew 
Johnson for Vice-President, and both were duly 
elected, defeating George D. McClellan and George H. 
Pendleton, Lincoln entered upon his second term of 
office March 4th, 1865. 

The following month the Confederate armies under 
General Robert Lee surrendered, the terms being 
made between Grant and Lee at Appomatox Court 



11 

HousG; in Virginia, April 9th, year 1865 and the other 
Confederates soon afterwards surrendered and the Civil 
war was ended. Lincoln was in Washington when he 
received the news of Lee's surrender and he delivered 
his last public address on Tuesday, April 11th; on Fri- 
day, the 14th he breakfasted with his son, Captain 
Robert Todd, who was on the staff of General Grant 
and from him he lieard the full details of the surrender 
of General Lee of which his son was an eyewitness; at 
eleven o'clock, he attended the meeting of the Cabinet 
and early part of the afternoon the President and Mrs. 
Lincoln went out for a long drive towards their summer 
home and after returning home that evening, they 
attended at Ford's theatre. The Company was Tom 
Taylor's Eccentric comedy in the play of our "Ameri- 
can Cousin." He was accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln, 
Miss Clara Harris and Major Henry Rathbone. They 
had the upper box, and it was there that John Wilkes 
Booth, the actor, shot the President in the head. There 
was a slight delay in locating the wound. The doctor 
located it behind the left ear, his body was removed 
across 10th street to No. 453, and messengers were sent 
to the members of the Cabinet, to his son Robert and 
his private ph\sician, A. K. Stone, and the Clergyman, 
Doctor Gurley of the New York Avenue Presbyterian 
Church, but the time was short for he breathed his last ^ 
early Saturday morning, Mnrrh 1'tihi Iftfiff In every ^ 

city and town of prominence, services were held in 
sympathy with his funeral solemnities at Washington. 
The great heart of the Republic throbbed with pain and 
sorrow. 

After the death of the president, his body was re- 
moved to the White House — a room had been prepared 



12 

for him — it was placed in a coffin which rested upon a 
catafalque. The funeral services were held in the East 
room. The scriptures were read by Kev. Dr. Hale of 
the Episcopal Church. The opening prayer was made 
by Bishop Simpson of the Methodist Church; the 
funeral address was delivered by Rt. Rev. Gurley of the 
Presbyterian Church, which Mr. Lincoln and his fami- 
ly had attended and the closing- jirayer was offered by 
Rt. Rev. Gray, the chaplain of the Senate, a pastor of 
the Baptist Church and then the body of the President 
was conveyed into the rotunda of the Capital, exposed 
to public view. After lying in state, the martyred 
President was borne to his final resting place at Spring- 
field, Illinois and was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetary. 
This occurred on Thursday, May 4th, 1865. In 1874, 
at Springfield an imposing monument, the work of 
sculptor Larkin G. Meade, was dedicated to his memory. 
It is of white marble with a portrait statue of Lincoln 
in bronze. It is there where he now reposes. 

His assassinator. Booth, was overtaken in Virginia 
where he took refuge in a barn on a farm of William 
Garrett and was shot and killed the same month by 
Sai'geant Boston Corbett and the other traitors nearly 
met the same fate. 

On Friday, the 12th of February, 1909, the hun- 
dreth anniversary of the birth of the great emancipator 
was celebrated with great solemnity at his birthplace 
on the farm near Hodgensville, Kentucky. Hon. Jas. 
W. Polk, former governor of Missouri, who also was 
president of the Lincoln Farm Association, made some 
introductory remarks and introduced President Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, who gave an eloquent panegyric on the 
life of Lincoln and then the corner stone of the memorial 



13 

hall was laid which is to preserve the little log cabin — 
(this cabin has been rebuilt from the logs of the original 
cabin). This was done in the presence of a large 
gathering of distinguished visitors. According to pro- 
gram it is to be dedicated by President William Howard 
Taft. The old Dixon and Mason Line was obliterated 
in the expression of a new national sentiment. The 
day was observed by school children in every state of 
the Union. The little farm of 110 acres will be kept 
and preserved by the nation. 

There is also a keen interest in New York of 
the Lincoln Memorial Road Association of America, 
to have a national highway constructed by the United 
States Government, to extend from the White House to 
the battlefield of Gettysburg which is about seventy- 
five miles and one of the most popular trips out of 
Washington is that to Gettysburg and return. The 
battlefield is now a national park of some 16,000 acres, 
which is traversed by about twenty-one miles of boule- 
vard. The lines where the Union and Confederate 
armies confronted each other are marked with a fine 
highway lined with hundreds of cannon which was used 
in the battle. 

The two greatest things that was accomplished in 
the 19th century were the establishment of the Monroe 
Doctrine and the abolishment of slavery. 

The name of Lincoln, says this eminent historian 
Merle d'aubiqu will remain one of the greatest names 
that history has to inscribe on its annals. "Honest 
Abe" as he was commonly called, was a man of re- 
markable personality? His height was six feet, four. 
In his latter years he wore a Prince Albert suit and 
when out of doors the invariable silk hat. 



14 

Tvv^o of his speeches have become classic. His ad- 
dress at Gettysburg in November, the 19th, 1863 and 
the other in his inauguration address of 1865. 

He also cultivated the Muse. His favorite poem 
which he committed to memory, was composed by 
William Knox, the Scottish poet who died in Edinburg 
in 1825. The first two stanzas : 

O, ivhy should the spirit of mortal he proud. 
Like a s^t ft fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud, 
A flash of the lightning, a break of the ivave, 
He passeth from life to his rest in the grange. 

The leaves of the oak and the ivillo-xv shall fade. 
Be scattered around and together he laid, 
And the young and the old, and the loiv and the high, 
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. 

Lincoln had four sons; Edward Baker, died in in- 
fancy and William Wallace died at the age of twelve 
and Thomas died at the age of eighteen and his eldest 
son, Robert Todd, a graduate of Harvard became a 
man of distinction as a diplomat. 

Mrs. Lincoln was born in 1818 — died in 1882 and 
was buried beside her husband in Springfield. His 
mother died in 1818 and his father in 1851. Mr. Scripps 
of Chicago thought that a sketch of his life should be 
prepared, applied for material. He got this simple 
answer: "My early history" said he, "is perfectly 
characterized by a single line of Gray's elegy 'the 
short and simple annals of the poor'." 

In ancient Rome, men followed the hero in his tri- 
umph with revelings to check his pride in our country, 
men assail the character to find the true gold of honesty 
and capacity. Numerous monuments have been given 



ir 

him, but his truest and noblest monument will be the 
glorious deeds which he had accomplished for his 
country. George Washington won American Indepen- 
dence — Lincoln won American Liberty. 

Albebt Anderson. 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 932 646 



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